There is good evidence that some of us lived with them here in the lairs, and that”—his voice grew deeper, closer to a warrior’s growl—“that they used us to try out their discoveries, so we were their servants to be used, killed, hurt, or maimed at their will.
“But it was because of this that we grew in our minds—as the Demons dwindled and died. For they forced on us their fatal sickness, trying to discover some cure. But us it did not slay nor render sterile. Instead, though our females had fewer younglings, those younglings were different, abler in ways.
“And the Demons, learning too late that they had set those they considered lowly servants on a trail which would lead those servants to walk as their equals, tried then to hunt them down and slay them, since they wished not that we should live when they died. But many escaped from the lairs, and those were our forefathers, and those of the Barkers, and the Tusked Ones.
“The Rattons went underground, and because “they were much smaller, even than they are today, they could hide where the Demons could not find them. And they lived in the dark, waiting, breeding their warriors.
“The hunting of our people by the Demons was a time of great pain and terror and darkness. And it set in us a fear of the lairs, so great a fear that it kept our people away, even when the last Demon met death. That was a disservice to us, for it cost us time. And even now, when I send to the tribes and tell them of the wonders waiting them here, few conquer their fears and come.”
“But if we learn the Demon’s knowledge,” asked
Furtig slowly, “will not all their evil learning perhaps be mixed with the good, so that in the end we will go the same way?”
“Can we ever forget what happened to them? Look about you, Furtig. Is there forgetting here? No, we can accept the good, remembering always that we must not say ‘I am mightier than the world which holds me, it is mine to be used as I please!’ “
What Gammage said was exciting. But, Furtig wondered, would it awake the same excitement in, say, such an Elder as Fal-Kan? The People of the caves, of the western tribe, were well content with life as it was. They had their customs, and a warrior did this or that, spoke thus, even as his father before him. A female became a Chooser and set up her own household, even as her mother. Ask them to break such pat-terns and be as these of Gammage’s clan, who paid more attention to learning the ways of Demons than to custom? He could foresee a greater difficulty than Gammage could imagine in that. Look at what the Elders now said of the Ancestor, in spite of his years of free giving, because he had tried to breach custom in a few of their ways.
While he was with Gammage, listening to the Ancestor, inwardly marveling at the fact that it was be-cause of the will and curiosity of this single member of his own cave that the lairs had been invaded, that its secrets were being pried open, Furtig could believe that this Elder was right. Nothing mattered save that they learn, and learn in a race against time with some invisible enemy who might at any moment arrive to do battle. And that the only weapons which would adequately protect them were those they still sought in that time race.
However, Furtig’s own part was not only insignificant but humiliating. For he, a seasoned warrior, must return to the status of youngling, studying with those half his age, even less. For learning here did not go by seasons reckoned from one’s birth, but rather by the speed with which one absorbed lessons in the instruction rooms.
He wore that ill-fitting headgear until his head ached. So equipped, he watched pictures flit across the wall, listened to that gabble of voice wherein about every third word had no meaning for a hunter-warrior. And those in the room sharing these periods of instruction were all so young!
The air of superiority worn by the lair people chilled him, seemed to erect an unscalable barrier. The adults Furtig dealt with were curt, always hurried. If they had any leisure, they spent it in some section to which he had not been invited. None were interested in Furtig as an individual, but merely as another mind to be pushed and pulled through learning.
His resentment grew, coloring what he learned. Though at times there were things so interesting he forgot his frustrations and became genuinely enthralled. He was especially fascinated with the series dealing with the latter days of the Demons—though why they had wished to leave such a sorry record, save as a warning, he could not understand.
He learned to hate as he had never hated the Barkers, though his detestation of the Rattons approached it, when he saw those sections dealing with the hunting down of his own people after they had not only proven to be able to withstand the disease wiping out the Demons, but had benefited in some ways from it. The ferocity of the Demons was a red madness, and Furtig, watching them, broke into growls, lashed his tail, and twice struck out at the pictured Demons with his war claws. He came to himself to see the younglings cowering away from him, staring as if the horrible madness of the Demons had spread to him. But he was not ashamed of his response. It was so that any warrior would face the enemy.
During this time he saw nothing of Liliha. And only once or twice did Gammage make one of his sudden appearances, ask a little vaguely if all were well, and go again.
Furtig longed to ask questions, but there was no one who showed enough awareness of his presence to allow him to do so. What did they all do? Had any-thing at all been discovered to hold off any Demons who might return? What and what and what—and sometimes who and who and who? Only there was no one he could approach.
Not until one day when he returned to his own chamber, that in which he had first awakened and which apparently had been given to him (the lairs were so large there was no end to the rooms to be used), and found Foskatt sitting on his bed.
It was like meeting a cave brother—so Furtig thought of the other now.
“You are healed?” He really did not need to ask that. There was only the faintest trace of a scar seam, hardly to be seen now, where mangled flesh had once oozed blood.
“Well healed.” Foskatt’s upper lip wrinkled in a wide grin. “Tell me, brother, how did you get me here? They say that we were found at the door of a rise shaft. But I know from my own hunting in the ways below that we were far from that when we had our last speech together. And what became of that Ku-La, who was with us in the stinking Ratton pen?”
Furtig explained the break-through of the rumbler.
Foskatt nodded impatiently. “That I know. But how did you control it? I must have gone into darkness then.”
“I did as you did, used my tongue in the cube,” Furtig replied. “We put you on the top of the rumbler and it carried us—but the stranger you name Ku-La would not come. He went on his own. And since the Rattons were everywhere”—Furtig gave a tail flick—“I do not believe he made it.”
“A pity. He would have been a useful contact with a new tribe. But if you used the caller—how did you? Touch starts the servants, yes, but you would not know the proper touch for a command.”
“I put in my tongue and it started,” Furtig repeated. “I gave no command—“
“But what did you think when you did that?” Foskatt persisted.
“Of Gammage and the need for reaching him.”
“Just so!” Foskatt got to his feet and began to stride up and down. “It is as I suspected—one touches, but it is not the touch alone as they have said, the pressure once, twice, and all the rest they would have us learn. It is the thought which directs those! For you have proved that. You knew no touch pattern, you merely thought of where you would like to be—and it traveled for you!”
“Until it died,” commented Furtig, “which it did.”
“But if it died, how then did you have any guide through the ways?” Foskatt halted, stared at Furtig.
“I—“ Furtig tried to find the proper words. “I tried hunting search—“
“The person tie!” Foskatt’s eyes grew even wider. “But you did not know Gammage, had no tie with him.”